Hero
by HMTQ - Madge
Summary: Who knew the road to being a hero was so tragic? Kotone finds this out the hard way after a traumatizing battle. Full summary inside, and some Silver/Kotone.


A/N: Hey everyone! It's been a long time since I posted a fanfic, and I got inspired to make this after a conversation with a friend of mine. A bit of a back story is necessary, though; This fanfic takes place during the Celebi event in HeartGold/SoulSilver, so if you don't know what it is, you should look it up or check it out on you tube because this fic will make no sense to you otherwise.

It's based off the fan theory that after beating Giovanni at Tohjo Falls, he is so striken with greif from Team Rockets failures that he jumps off the top of a waterfall. The reason people think this is because after Giovanni rants bit after you've beaten him, he runs out of the cave and you hear an ominous splash. I don't believe the fan theory myself, but thought I would toy with it as a "What If" situation. ^_^ Also, this is post Victory Road Silver which explains why he's a bit nicer, and it's also posted under the assumption everyone already found out Giovanni is Team Rockets leader during the three years he disappeared. So without further ado, here's the fanfic;

* * *

_**Hero**_

Kotone always wanted to be a hero.

Just like someone from the stories she read as a young kid, who valiantly saved people and Pokemon alike. Someone who was to be looked up to, and would save the day simply for a noble cause. Not because she wanted glory or fame, but because she just honestly wanted to help people. And now, on this day, she really did feel like the hero she always dreamed of being. She had just beaten the boss of the biggest and most feared gang around: Team Rocket. Needless to say, she was feeling pretty good about herself and her Pokemon. The same could not be said for the agitated man who stood in front of her at that very moment.

Giovanni's mouth formed a hard line, his jaw clenched in a tight seal. He flexed his fingers once, twice, and once again but it did nothing to calm his nerves. He couldn't believe it. He _wouldn't. _This girl- this bubbly, young girl- had beaten him. With her silly grin and high-pitched shout of "Feraligatr, use Surf!", she had beaten his precious Nidoqueen.

His last Pokemon.

The same girl still stood across the way from him, that large smile Giovanni already hated still plastered to her face. Sweat glistened on her forehead from the intense battle they just had, one that she barely was able to win. Her friend who she had called Ethan was still standing next to her and smiling, having been cheering her on the whole battle. "You're definitely getting your favorite poffin for that awesome Surf you just did." Ethan whispered to Kotone's Feraligatr, who roared happily is response.

Kotone could still barely believe she had won. She was out of hyper potions, and Feraligatr was started to feel the effects of the Nidoqueen's attacks. Feraligatr was the strongest Pokemon she had, and she knew if he fainted, the battle was almost certainly over. It didn't help that Celebi, her second strongest Pokemon, was her only way back to the Ilex Shrine where this whole mess started. It would be too risky to battle with Celebi. If that last Surf didn't critically hit Giovanni's Nidoqueen… Well, she didn't even want to think about what could have happened.

"How is this possible…?" Giovanni growled out. He could feel the hate rising within him. _Who _was this girl? And how could she, someone barely older then ten, beat him? He was Giovanni, leader of the toughest gym, and boss of one of the most notorious gangs ever to be formed. All his hard work, everything he had done up until now, was gone in the second this girl made her final attack. And it just wasn't fair. He wouldn't allow all his work to go down the drain. He couldn't let everything he's done go to waste. Not again. _It wasn't fair. _He clenched his fists. "How could a kid like you manage to destroy my dream once again?" He roared.

Kotone took a small step back, admittedly a bit frightened by his outburst. Almost immediately, she tried to compose herself, a bit embarrassed she got frightened. _"Now Kotone," _She thought to herself. "_being scared isn't very hero-like. You need to stand tall and be prepared to fight back if anything happens." _Nodding to herself, she put her balled fists up in what she felt was a 'hero-like' stance.

Her Feraligatr on the other hand wasn't so convinced she could fight him herself. He stepped forward protectively. He growled warningly at Giovanni, as if daring him to take one step towards his dear master. Giovanni could tell from one look this Pokemon wouldn't go easy on him just because he was human if it meant protecting his master.

Giovanni knew by now the precious dream of Team Rocket had become little more then an illusion. It brought back all too prominent memories of the first time Team Rocket was brought down, three years ago… By some _kid_ named Red. And now this girl, who had the same look in her eye that Red did, had beaten him too. Giovanni did the only thing he could do then, and the only thing he could do now: He ran. He knew what needed to be done after all these failures. He turned and was gone before Kotone could process what he doing. She blinked once. Twice. Had this man, the one she had just been frightened of a few minutes before, really done something as cowardly as running away from her? It would almost be comical if Kotone could believe what she was seeing.

"Come on, Kotone," Ethan started, trying to get the girl out of her baffled disbelief. "we can't just let him get away-"

_Splash!_

They both froze. Kotone attempted to register what she had heard, while Ethan only stared in the direction the splash had come from in shock. Had Giovanni just…?

Kotone was running towards the exit of the small cave they were in before Ethan could utter a syllable of protest. Her stomach twisted in a knot, and a cold dread settled in her heart from what she saw. Directly outside the cave was a large, rapid waterfall. One that, from that splash they just heard, Giovanni had evidentially just thrown himself off of.

Off in the distance, Kotone could hear the ominous static of the radio, and the calls of Team Rocket members shouting for their leader who would never come.

* * *

Ethan and Kotone stood just outside the Ilex Shrine, a tense silence between them. Almost immediately after Kotone had her fears confirmed, Celebi decided to transport them all back to the shrine. Ethan stood quietly holding his Marill he had just been reunited with. He knew why Kotone was so horrified. He could tell why. Shifting awkwardly, he opened his mouth to say comforting words to his childhood friend. Then closed it almost immediately. What could he say in a situation like this?

"It's… It's not your fault he did that, you know." He said gently. He heard a sniffle coming from Kotone. That obviously didn't help. He took a step towards her. "You shouldn't blame yourself-"

"Ethan, please just stop. I want to be alone for a while, okay? Please…" She whispered quietly. The boy blinked, a bit shocked, but he nodded nonetheless. It wasn't like Kotone to want to be alone when she was upset. But… he definitely understood why.

"Alright… but if you need me, you know where to find me." He said, trying his best to be comforting. And with that, he and his Marill turned and were gone, leaving Kotone to her thoughts..

Kotone stood there silently for what felt like forever, listening to the sounds of the forest that would be comforting on any other day but this. Her Feraligatr nudged her hand gently and whined, as if trying to echo Ethan's previous words of, "It's not your fault…"

Kotone wished she could believe it herself.

"Feraligatr… l-let's get going. It wouldn't be very productive to stay here all day, would it?" She said, attempting a weak smile. Feraligatr nodded, happy to see his master was collected enough to leave.

Kotone started to walk out of the shrine, but with each step her feet started to feel heavier and heavier. She just couldn't shove what had happened out of her mind. Of course she wanted Giovanni to be stopped… but never in her life did she want him dead. In jail maybe, or stopped permanently, but not _dead_. And especially not for something she did. To her, it didn't matter Giovanni was the bad guy. It didn't matter that he was the villain and she was the hero meant to take him down, just like in the fairytales she had read as a child. None of that mattered anymore. Had losing the battle really made himself so upset that he did such a thing as throwing himself off a waterfall? Kotone didn't even want to think about the possibility. But… what else could it be?

And with that, Kotone could do nothing more but collapse. She tried her best to hold back tears, attempting to tell herself that heroes who save people and Pokemon don't cry. But at this moment… She didn't feel very much like a hero. In this moment, she felt more and more like a terrified child. She didn't like this feeling. It made her all too vulnerable. All too weak.

_Snap._

Kotone jumped at the sound of twigs snapping near her. Startled out of her thoughts, she barely had enough time to wonder how long she was sitting there, or how long her Feraligatr had been whining and trying to nudge her out of her thoughts. She looked up to see a familiar red-headed rival walking her way…

"_Great," _She thought sarcastically. _"just who I wanted to see at a time like this." _Her stomach did a flip when she remembered what she just learned from her time-traveling with Celebi. Silver… He was Giovanni's son. Kotone's breath quickened as she remembered that, and she couldn't stop the trembling that started. Even if Silver hated his dad, he would definitely still be upset about what happened, wouldn't he? It was his father after all. His blood relative. She stood up silently, what felt like a permanent dread constricting her, making it hard to breath. This wouldn't end well…

And then he did something that seemed extraordinary to Kotone on such a horrible day. He simply bumped into her, just like he usually did. As if he didn't see or notice she was standing right there in his line of sight. The familiarity of the situation was strange to Kotone after everything else that had happened. This whole day felt like a horrible nightmare to her, so to have something regular happen to her… It was a nice change of pace. Comforting, even.

"Ack! What the heck do you think you're doing? You shouldn't just stand there like an idiot and block the whole path!" Silver said agitated, his eyes narrowing. He crossed his arms in an annoyed way. Something Kotone had seen often, nearly every time she had been around him. He always seemed to be grumpy about something or another, and it almost seemed like his angry stance was his default way of standing.

"You're the idiot! You didn't even see me standing there when I was obviously right there!" Kotone said, albeit halfheartedly. It was the regular exchange; Silver would bump into her, they'd yell at each other and battle a bit, then part ways. It always happened, something that was so much the norm that Kotone expected to see him at least once a week. Today though, was different. _Very_ different.

And suddenly, the familiarity of the situation could no longer comfort Kotone. Suddenly, Kotone's stomach was doing flips like a Mew would when it's excited. She felt absolutely sickened once again. Her eye's involuntarily watered up again. Quickly, she swiped at her eyes trying to get the embarrassing tears away. She couldn't allow the red-head to see her cry. She could only imagine how much of a field day he would have making fun of her crying.

"Er…" Silver said awkwardly. "Are you… crying?"

"No!" Kotone yelled, a bit too quickly to be believable. She pursed her lips, her face starting to grow a bit red. And it definitely wasn't from the crying.

Silver blinked, confused at the sudden whiplash of emotion from Kotone. She easily shifted from the normal angry rant of hers to crying about Arceus-knows-what. He wasn't sure what to do. Part of him wanted to reach out and comfort the girl, but just thinking about it made his face grow redder then Kotone's. _"This isn't the time to be thinking about such things." _He thought, trying desperately to will his blush away before Kotone could see. A sniffle from Kotone snapped him out of his thoughts almost immediately. Why the heck was she crying, anyways?

Another tense, awkward silence feel between the two. Silver frantically searching his head for something to say, and Kotone frantically trying to stop making her body go against her with so many tears. Needless to say, it had to have been one of the most awkward situations either of them had been in. But to Kotone, it all just seemed… trivial. Why should she care if Silver saw her cry? Why should she care it wasn't very hero-like? How could she even worry about these things after all that happened?

And Kotone just stopped. She stopped caring if he saw her cry, she stopped worrying, and she stopped asking questions. She let all of that leave her to think about later. All she wanted now, was to let it out. To cry and yell and sniffle until she felt better. And who could blame her after what just happened? After having to stand in front of the son of the man she basically killed? Kotone once again fell to the spongy grass beneath her, sniffling and letting the tears overflow as much as pleased.

And now Silver was almost panicking. What the heck should he do? The rival he's had for months now was becoming a mess and he couldn't do anything about it. He didn't even know why she upset in the first place. A million questions ran through his head and they always came up with the same answer: Comfort her. He felt awkward just thinking about it. Anything besides arguing with Kotone felt completely unnatural to him. It was mostly due to the fact he always felt a bit weak in the knees when around her for some reason he didn't yet quite understand. Admittedly nervous, he forced his legs to move and sit down next to Kotone. She barely seemed to notice he was there anymore. He briefly toyed with the idea of simply leaving and thus getting away from the most awkward situation in his life, but decided against it. Secretly, although Silver wouldn't admit it to himself yet, he wanted to help Kotone. To see her cheerfully infectious smile again, the one that always made him feel a bit woozy when he saw it. He wanted her to be happy again.

"Erm… W-What's wrong, Kotone?" He said, forcing himself to ask the most prominent question on his mind. Kotone could only answer with an incoherent jumble of words through sniffles. Silver thought he briefly caught the words 'Tohjo Falls', 'battle', and 'Team Rocket'.

"_Okay," _He thought. _"She must have had a battle with a Team Rocket member at Tohjo Falls. I don't see how that would make her cry in any possible way." _He thought, more confused now then he was before. It was her next barely coherent mass of words that made him stop dead in his tracks.

"Giovanni…" She said, and mumbled a few words Silver couldn't possibly understand if he tried. "I battled him at Tohjo Falls." She sniffled, willing herself to continue. "I won. He… He got really upset. And then he… he threw himself off the top of the waterfall! And it's my fault." She sobbed. Her body ached from the crying. Her heart was like thunder in her ears as she waited for Silver to answer. For Silver to be horrified. To yell and be angry. She waited. And she waited.

But it never came. Finally, she looked up from huddled position to see something, or rather, hear something, she never in her lifetime thought she would hear.

Silver was laughing.

She stared at him, utterly horrified. How could he be laughing? She felt sick to her stomach. He couldn't possibly be happy Giovanni was dead, could he? "W-Why are you laughing?" She asked, still not believing what she was hearing. "This isn't funny!" Her voice rose. "How could you possibly laugh at something like that?"

"I know, I know." He said, trying to stifle the laughter. "I'm sorry." Kotone blinked. 'Sorry'. Another thing she never expected to hear in her life from Silver. "I just can't believe you would be upset over something as ridiculous as that." Silver looked at her horrified expression and rolled his eyes. He could guess what she was thinking. "No, I'm not laughing because I think it's good Giovanni is dead." Kotone almost literally breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm laughing because you think Giovanni is _dead. _That's the most ridiculous thing I heard all day."

Kotone thought she stopped breathing. "… _What?_" She murmured. Giovanni had to be dead. She had been there when he jumped off the top of the waterfall.

"I… er…" Silver frantically searched for a way to explain. "I spotted him flying with his Honchkrow on my way over here. He flew right over me, I could see him clearly."

He looked over at Kotone, who was currently completely the wide-eyed and shocked. She was trembling a bit, trying to process this new information. _"He… He's not…?" _Her mind wouldn't come up with complete sentences.

"You mean he's not-" Kotone started.

"Dead? Nope."

"He's okay?"

"Yes."

"So he… h-he-"

"Tricked you? Yes. You've been had, Kotone. Giovanni… Let's just say I know him well. He always has a back-up plan if something goes wrong." Silver finished.

Kotone sucked in her breath. Relief washed over her in waves. "Oh thank Arceus…" She whispered, the last of her tears completely dried. "I… I thought I was to blame for killing him. That… That definitely had to be the most traumatizing hours of my life." She muttered, her breathing finally returning to normal.

They were both silent for a few moments. "Well Kotone… even if Giovanni had done such thing, you wouldn't be the one to blame for what he did. I know Giovanni wouldn't throw himself off a cliff for losing a battle. It's more likely he would have been tired of Team Rocket's failures and driven to that point after threes years…" Silver trailed off.

Kotone breathed deeply. "Y-You think so?" She said. She was amazed. Silver was being so nice. He had helped her be brought out of that horrible trance she was in. She couldn't thank him enough.

"I know so. You shouldn't have blamed yourself. You really are stupid for doing that." He said, crossing his arms in his familiarly grumpy way.

"_And there goes him being nice…" _She thought, frowning a bit. _"It was nice while it lasted-"_

"Besides," A scarlet red appeared on Silvers cheeks, and he noticeable got a bit nervous. "I… I think it's pretty heroic you went up against him." He finished, mumbling.

Kotone stared, seemingly shocked at what Silver had said for some reason he didn't understand. Suddenly, that infectious grin Silver craved to see again appeared on her face. She threw her arms around Silver in a surprise hug. Silver made could only manage a slight whimper of surprise at the hug,

"Thank you so much, Silver. That was the most absolutely perfect thing you could have said to me." She said, hugging him tightly. Silver went completely stiff, his face a deeper red then his hair. "I really appreciate you doing this. You know… comforting me and stuff." She finished, getting a bit red herself and pulling away. Kotone stood up and picked up her yellow bag she had dropped on the ground, and poked her sleeping Feraligatr to wake him up. She rolled her eyes. It was just like him to fall asleep during something like that.

Once her Feraligatr groggily got up and ready to go, she turned back to Silver. "Well… I suppose we should part ways now." She said, smiling. Silver only nodded, still dumbfounded from the surprise hug. "Thank you again." Kotone said, still happily relieved. Slinging her bag around her shoulder, she called, "Bye! See I'll see you later!"

Silver could only manage a weak wave as she started to disappear into the distance. It was over and done with so quick. Silently, he sat there contemplating everything that had just happened. On a whim, he decided to take out his Meganium from it's Pokeball. The released Pokemon stretched, happy to be out of it's ball. It walked over to it's master's side, and plopped down contently next to him. Another moment of silence passed.

"… Do you think I did the right thing?" Silver said quietly. His Meganium thought for a second, knowing exactly what he was talking about. The Meganium looked thoughtful, then bobbed it's head up and down in a nod. Silver sighed, leaning back.

"Maybe… maybe one of these days I'll tell Kotone I didn't actually see Giovanni flying. But for now… I think it's best she doesn't know. Right now, I want to make sure she stays happy and smiling for as long as I can."

* * *

A/N: And there's the finished story. ^_^ I hope you guys liked it, and reviews are appreciated greatly. If you found anything that bothered you in the story, critique is also welcome with open arms. Personally, I'm not too sure how I feel about the story. It's my first Pokemon fanfic, so I tried my best to write the characters well. But anyways… Thanks for reading, everyone!


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